REPERTOIRE 


AMERICAN  TOUR 
SEASON  1902-3 

V.  LIEBLERg?  CO.  MANAGERS 


ISSUED  BY 

MEYER  BROTHERS  &  CO 

PUBLISHERS  OF 

“THE  THEATRE” 

NEW  YORK 


ELEONORA  DUSE. 


_  IGNORA  ELEONORA  DUSE 

^BEYOND  QUESTION  OR  DISPUTE 
Hthe  FOREMOST  ACTRESS 
m  IN  THE  WORLD  JK  JS& 

Was  born  in  Vigevano,  Italy,  a  little  village  on  the  Lom- 
bardy-Piedmont  frontier.  Her  parents  were  in  very  humble 
1/1V  circumstances,  the  meagre  salary  obtained  by  the  father  as  a 
oJJ  strolling  player  scarcely  providing  the  family  with  the  bare 
'  necessities  of  life. 

The  child  Eleonora  early  gave  indication  of  preternatural  histri¬ 
onic  talent,  a  talent  that  her  grandfather,  Luigi  Duse,  then  manager 
of  the  Garibaldi  Theatre  at  Padua,  was  quick  to  discover,  for  on 
the  occasion  of  a  brief  visit  to  the  village  home  he  casually  remarked 
to  Eleonora’s  parents,  “Take  good  care  of  that  child,  she  may  make 
you  rich  some  day.”  This  remark  fell  upon  willing  ears,  and,  at  the 
age  of  twelve,  the  tiny  heir  to  future  greatness  accompanied  the  father 
on  one  of  his  tours,  playing  a  small  part  in  the  company  with  which 
he  was  engaged.  At  fourteen  she  was  given  leading  roles,  and  two 
years  later  she  was  summoned  to  Verona  to  play  Juliet  before  a  large 
open-air  assemblage,  on  a  festal  occasion  of  national  significance. 
The  rendition  was  marvelous  in  its  strength,  and  the  morning  found 
the  village  maiden  famous,  for  all  Italy  knew  of  her  achievement. 

Offers  of  engagements  of  an  extraordinary  character  flowed  in 
upon  her,  and  in  a  brief  period  of  time  we  find  her  installed  in  the 
great  Florentine  Theatre  at  Naples,  a  theatre  in  which  Salvini,  Ristori, 
and  Alberti  had  won  their  greatest  triumphs.  The  vast  auditorium 
was  thronged  with  the  culture,  wealth,  and  elegance  of  the  great  city, 
who  accepted  the  Duse’s  performance  as  surpassing  anything  they  had 
witnessed  in  a  decade.  This  was  the  birth  of  her  real  fame — a 
fame  that  has  never  since  waned,  not  for  a  single  day. 

Following  the  conquest  of  Italy,  playing  brief  engagements  in 
rapid  succession  in  all  the  great  cities,  she  became  filled  with  the 
audacity  of  victory,  and  being  denied  recognition  at  the  great 
Dramatic  Festival  in  Vienna,  for  which  extraordinary  preparations 
had  been  made  by  the  Princesse  de  Metternich,  she  leased  the  Karl 


Theatre  for  her  own  use  and  took  the  Austrian  capital  by  storm  ;  and  before  the 
incident  had  closed  Signora  Duse’s  performance  was  substantially  the  only  dramatic 
festival  in  Vienna.  All  the  world  knows  of  her  superb  triumph  in  Paris,  despite 
the  organized  effort  to  compass  her  extinction,  and  how  she  afterwards  drove  through 
Berlin  and  London  with  the  artistic  world  chained  to  her  chariot  wheels. 

This  is  Signora  Duse’s  third  visit  to  America,  but  never  before  was  she  the 
Duse  of  to-day,  for  to-day  sees  her  in  perfect  physical  health,  and  at  the  very  pin¬ 
nacle  of  her  career,  and  hence  capable  of  exerting  her  powers  to  the  utmost,  and 
with  an  absolute  knowledge  that  when  thus  exerted  no  other  artist  living  can  pro¬ 
duce  such  results.  To  the  ordinary  artist  such  a  conviction,  whether  justified  or 
not,  would  doubtless  be  a  very  consoling  one.  In  the  mental  domain  of  Eleonora 
Duse  they  have  no  abiding  place.  She  exerts  herself  in  a  role  because  she  lives  the 
part,  and  she  could  not  avoid  throwing  her  whole  soul  into  it  if  she  tried,  no  more 
than  she  could  avoid  being  a  great  actress  if  she  tried.  She  is  in  love  with  those 
D’Annunzio  roles  she  has  included  in  her  American  repertoire,  and  those  who  see 
Signora  Duse  in  any  one  of  them  will  not  go  away  dissatisfied. 

Th  ose  who  are  familiar  with  the  weird  and  yet  marvelously  beautiful  tales 
which  D’Annunzio  has  written,  and  who  know  and  appreciate  the  genius  and  grace 
of  the  gifted  Italian,  will  have  no  difficulty  in  comprehending  just  why  she  should 
desire  the  D’Annunzio  brain  to  conceive,  and  the  D’Annunzio  hand  to  limn,  for 
stage  portraiture,  the  soulful  characters  of  which  his  pen  has  so  pathetically  told. 
Who  else  can  bring  to  the  thrilling  stage  spectacles  the  atmospheric  environment  in 
which  they  can  alone,  and  should  alone,  live  ?  Do  you  know  the  sad  yet  strangely 
beautiful  story  of  the  “  Dead  City,”  the  City  of  Pelopides,  amid  the  dead  bones  of 
which  the  five  persons  who  figure  in  the  play  dig  and  delve,  and  ponder,  and  live 
among  the  people  who  inhabited  it  in  the  centuries  agone  ?  Who  but  a  D’Annun¬ 
zio  could  properly  put  upon  the  stage  the  strange  scenes  his  own  visions  have  cre¬ 
ated  ?  Who  but  he  could  put  into  the  mouths  of  these  people  dialogue  befitting  ? 
Who  else  could  conceive,  and  carry  to  conclusion,  a  plot  so  mystifying  and  so 
enthralling  ?  Abnormal  these  may  all  be,  but  in  their  deviation  from  the  ordinary 
lies  their  chief  charm. 

Consider  for  a  moment  the  strange  plot  that  constitutes  the  warp  and  woof  of 
“The  Dead  City.”  The  blind  wife,  Anna,  longing  for  death  that  her  husband 
may  be  happy  in  the  love  of  another,  for  whom  he  has  formed  an  unholy  passion. 
That  other  is  Bianca  Maria,  whose  brother,  Leonardo,  has  been  tempted  by  the 
charms  of  the  girl  into  a  love  that  is  even  more  guilty  and  shameless  than  that 


IN  FRANCESCA  I)A  RIMINI 


which  fills  Alessandro’s  breast,  for  he,  too,  loves 
Bianca  Maria,  his  own  sister  !  What  strange 
and  morhid  complications  are  these  !  But  such 
a  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  pervades  it  all,  a  nobility 
of  soul  that  clinches  onto  one’s  sympathies  despite 
the  promptings  of  reason.  Bianca  Maria  compre¬ 
hends  to  the  full  the  wrong  that  is  being  done 
Anna,  and  she  confesses  to  her  own  brother  her 
love  for  Alessandro.  Leonardo  is  stricken  with 
horror,  but  while  seeing  no  relief  for  the  terrible 
situation  save  in  the  death  of  Bianca  Maria,  he 
says  naught  of  his  own  unhappy  love,  and  when 
he  afterward  strangles  her  by  the  spring  way  up 
in  the  mountains,  she  dies  with  no  knowledge  of 
her  brother’s  iniquity.  Even  Alessandro,  who  is 
seemingly  the  most  heartless  and  cruel  of  any,  is 
not  wholly  insensible  to  right  and  justice,  for, 
having  followed  the  brother  and  sister  to  the  fatal 
spot,  he  does  not  complain  at  Leonardo’s  cruel 
solution  of  the  problem.  And  when  the 
blind  wife  breaks  in  upon  the  group  it 
is  only  to  fall  by  the  body  of  Bianca 
Maria,  and  lament  her  untimely  death, 
wholly  forgetful  of  the  love  that  Bianca 
Maria  had  borne  her  husband.  And  so 
real  and  extreme  is  Anna’s  anguish,  that 
in  her  throes  of  mental  torture  the 
scales  fall  from  her  eyes,  and  the  bless¬ 
ing  for  which  she  had  so  long  prayed, 
to  be  worthy  the  love  of  her  husband,  is 
vouchsafed  her. 

And  all  this  weird  combination  of 
circumstances  has  for  its  abiding  place 
the  tombs  of  Pelopides,  the  home  of 
Leonardo,  the  archaeologist,  who  has 
passed  his  adult  life  in  groping  among 
the  buried  graves  of  the  dead  city. 


The  story  of  Francesca  is  one  with 
which  the  general  public  is  more  familiar, 
but  it  is  of  the  same  sad  strain,  the  same 
thrilling,  enthralling  nature.  The  betrothal 
of  the  lovely  Francesca,  yet  in  her  child¬ 
hood,  without  her  consent,  and  practically 
without  her  knowledge,  to  the  deformed 
and  brutal  soldier,  Gianciotto,  in  order 
that  the  military  strength  of  the  houses  of 
Polentani  and  Rimini  may  be  strength¬ 
ened  ;  the  sad  fate  which  leads  the  crook- 
backed  lord  of  Rimini  to  send  his  handsome 
brother  to  do  his  wooing  for  him  ;  the 
natural  result  of  the  meeting  of  the  two 
young  hearts,  and  the  fatal  ending  of  it  all, 
is  a  story  that  has  lived  in  legend  and 
printed  tale  from  time  immemorial,  and 
on  the  stage  for  three-quarters  of  a  cen¬ 
tury.  What  a  story  for  a  D’Annunzio  to 
grapple  with  !  Have  little  doubt  but  that  he  breathes  into  the  strange  tale  the 
breath  of  life,  and  in  his  presentation  the  old  familiar  characters,  indeed,  live  again. 

The  character  of  Gioconda  Dianti  ap¬ 
peals  in  a  different  way,  and  although  the 
spectator  is  conscious  of  the  fact  that  she  is 
in  the  wrong,  and  has  little  claim  on  the 
auditor’s  sympathy,  yet,  like  Lucio,  he  finds 
himself  listening  to  the  song  of  the  siren, 
and,  like  Lucio,  he  finds  himself  irresistibly 
yielding. 

In  La  Gioconda  it  is  the  wronged  and 
ruined  wife,  Sylvia,  who  holds  up  her  maimed 
hands  to  us,  hands  maimed  in  defence  of  her 
husband’s  honor,  but  it  is  the  sculptor’s  model 
who  triumphs,  while  the  unfortunate  wife  is 
compelled  to  endure  desertion  as  well  as  her 
physical  injuries  ;  not  only  the  desertion  of 
husband,  but  the  desertion  of  her  child  as  well. 


IN  FRANCESCA  DA  RIMINI, 


IN  STREET  COSTUME. 


IN  ADDITION  to  Signora  Duse  in  her  repertoire,  Liebler  & 
Company’s  offerings  for  the  dramatic  years  of  1902—03—04 
will  include — Miss  Viola  Allen  in  Hall  Caine’s  “The  Eternal 
City”;  Kyrle  Bellew  in  “A  Gentleman  of  France,”  beside  those  of 
his  former  repertoire;  a  dramatization  of  Mary  Johnston’s 
“Audrey”;  James  O’Neill  in  a  new  play,  “The  Honour  of  the 
Humble,”  by  Harriet  Ford;  Hall  Caine’s  “The  Christian”; 
Madame  Gabrielle  Rejane  in  her  repertoire  ;  Sig.  Ermete  Novelli, 
the  great  Italian  tragedian  of  the  day,  in  classic  repertory;  Edward 
Morgan  in  a  new  play  ;  Vesta  Tilly,  the  English  comedienne,  in  a 
new  play  ;  and  the  American  actor  and  humorist,  Ezra  Kendall,  in 
a  play  based  on  a  poem  by  James  Whitcomb  Riley,  dramatized  by 
Herbert  Hall  Winslow. 


THE 

MATTHEWS-NORTHRUP 


WORKS 


H  1  S  MAR  K 


'W' 


